GWT: Premier League Matchday 37

[Duchene2MacKinnon]

Yeah Liverpool have to win on the final day now...again, probably.

D2M I think you need to look closer at the situation. If Chelsea and Spurs win out Liverpool have to win their last game.

He had a chance to rest him against Stoke to save him for this match and didn't. At this point what's more important winning a trophy or obtaining top 4?

 

[BKIslandersFan]

If Wenger's final word to Arsenal fans were Wenger Out (a la Kobe), it would have been amazing.

 

[bluesfan94]

Helluva send off for Wenger.

The most Liverpool thing that could happen is them losing the final and not making top 4

 

[YNWA14]

He had a chance to rest him against Stoke to save him for this match and didn't. At this point what's more important winning a trophy or obtaining top 4?

I agree he should have rested somw players in these games but it's too late for that now. Beat Brighton and it doesn't matter. We wouldn't even be talking about this if Liverpool weren't in the CL final and had all these injuries. Unfortunately our lack of depth and deep CL run is pretty taxing. It should be fine in the end but it's a bit nervy that there's even a chance after how strong a season we've had.

Unfortunately the difficulties against low block teams keep rearing their heads. At least Real Madrid don't play that way.

 

[Duchene2MacKinnon]

I agree he should have rested somw players in these games but it's too late for that now. Beat Brighton and it doesn't matter. We wouldn't even be talking about this if Liverpool weren't in the CL final and had all these injuries. Unfortunately our lack of depth and deep CL run is pretty taxing. It should be fine in the end but it's a bit nervy that there's even a chance after how strong a season we've had.

Unfortunately the difficulties against low block teams keep rearing their heads. At least Real Madrid don't play that way.

But you are here and acting as if you are not is bizarre.

 

[Duchene2MacKinnon]

Wenger is class all the way. Amazing man.

 

[Live in the Now]

You guys worry too much.

 

[Paulie Gualtieri]

Cant throw a two goal lead with 15 minutes to go to the last place team.

Under Darren Moore (absolute unit), West Brom are not acting like a last place team.

 

[Savant]

You guys worry too much.

Same position they were in last season honestly.

 

[Chimaera]

Never easy for Liverpool

 

[S E P H]

Good yet awkward sending off for Wenger. Like everything about it was classy, but it seemed that nobody knew what was going to happen next (so the players and him where just looking around in no man's land in what to do next). It was also awkward when the PA said that they were going to bring out people from Wenger's historic past and I was like "**** yeah, we get to see ex-players from the Invincibles" and all that came out were two old blokes. However, the speeches were good and made up for the weird side of it. One more game and we get new life in this squad, it was a decade and half coming. Not trying to dishonour Wenger here, I can't wait until he gets his glorious statue in front of the Emirates as well.

I mean you arent wrong but they don't really have anyone else. They are out of bodies.

Should play Mamadou Sakho on wing.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

There's not a bad chance that Arsenal will struggle under whoever succeeds Wenger. And people will try to act like it's because Wenger is gone rather than the consequence of a slow and steady decline in quality in Arsenal's team over Wenger's last half dozen years or so.

 

[Live in the Now]

Same position they were in last season honestly.

Yeah kind of. It wasn't something to worry about then either.

Huddersfield will take care of it.

 

[Stray Wasp]

I haven't exactly followed closely but it seems that Benitez is generally not being criticised for the recent down turn in results. Is that fair>

That is fair. At least, he's not being criticised by anyone who understands football.

But Benitez has proved he can cope with criticism anyway. The worry is whether he retains faith that his efforts are being given their just rewards. We know fine well that if the Magpies end the season on a run of five games without a win, this stat will be parroted all summer, ramping up a little negative frisson before the ball has been kicked. The media, after all, feeds on crisis, and they always have the madhouse in NE1 earmarked as the first port of call for trouble. And the passion of Tyneside is a perennial double-edged sword- a magnificent place to play when the fans are happy, a tortuous place to play when they aren't. Benitez understands this, and if he isn't convinced he has players fit for the challenge, why not look elsewhere rather than wait for the returns to diminish?

It doesn't help when the owner has in the past shown that he knows no gratitude. Meanwhile, his treatment of Chris Hughton suggested a tendency to be jealous of popular managers. There is about Newcastle United a genuine sense that Ashley wouldn't mind seeing Benitez fail.

Remember that Benitez's appointment represented an act of last-ditch desperation, only undertaken because their preferred candidate, Steve McClaren, wasn't working out. Appointing Benitez ultimately forced Ashley to abandon his much-beloved model- a soulless institution run by flunkies that no credible football club would touch with a bargepole. And that abandonment still appears to chafe.

An anecdote: last season NUFC won nine straight games to go top of the Championship. The run ended with a 1-0 home defeat to Blackburn, and Ashley wasn't happy. The defeat shouldn't have happened, he proclaimed. The man capable of thinking it's a good idea to appoint Dennis Wise as director of football, give Joe Kinnear a job on two occasions, grant Pardew a five and a half year contract followed by an eight year extension, and allow McClaren to take over fresh from pulling off a classic example of bed-shitting at Derby has a keen eye for picking holes in the shortcomings of people who've thrived despite the obstacles he's placed in their way. It mattered not that Villa and Norwich, also relegated in 2016, were struggling. Or that of the previous 18 teams to be relegated from the EPL only one (Burnley in 2016) had won automatic promotion. No doubt the failure of any relegated club from 2017 to finish in the 2018 Championship's top two won't give Ashley pause for thought either. He sees only what he wants to see- which is that football isn't slavery, which means an awful compulsion to pay people rather than steal the pennies from their eyes.

Ashley can click his fingers and have his London media serfs spew out whatever heap of drivel suits him. (A digression: Graeme Souness was very critical of Newcastle earlier in the season, saying exactly what Ashley would like to be able to get away with saying- that if Benitez was a good enough coach he'd be able to win games with a bunch of traffic cones. By a coincidence so pure it makes me weep for the way it gives Souness the air of being a reptile whose integrity can be bought and sold, shortly afterward it comes to light that he's doing a talk-in arranged by Ashley's personal-PR man. Said PR-man is currently being paid £500,000 by NUFC even though they already have their own PR team. And by another tragically pure coincidence, Mike Ashley owns shares in the PR man's company.)

Benitez already has to put up with said PR man- who I won't name because he doesn't deserve oxygen, much less publicity- standing at the back of his press conferences so he can scuttle off to Ashley to tell tales. Just as he has to put up with a lawyer who is a long-time Ashley associate monitoring every penny he spends. The reason for this appears to be that Lee Charnley- a hitherto paid-up Ashley lickspittle- has been so bedazzled by Benitez he's decided there's more to life than making a billionaire richer by flirting with 18th every season.

Ashley still resents against any attempt to sign a player over the age of 25. I think he's desperate to be able to enjoy the sort of maverick triumph in football he did in sports retail (as if outwitting Pep Guardiola and selling tracksuits to people from Dartford were remotely the same thing), and having failed at every half-baked plan he's previously hit on for so doing, he's decided that if he can avoid breaking the Shepherd regime's record transfer, he's won some kind of victory for the ages.

Last summer, NUFC lacked top flight experience and reliable difference-makers. Benitez identified as of particular importance the need to sign an experienced, vocal goalkeeper, a creative attacking midfielder and a striker. No keeper arrived at all, and restrictions forced him to turn to Jacob Murphy and Joselu rather than his preferred choices.

I think Rafa did superbly to keep the team from being stranded up until the crucial moment when Ashley's morbid fear of relegation could be used as leverage to make the necessary signings. And, please note, even then none of the signings were permanent. But Dubravka, Kenedy and Slimani (albeit briefly, in his sub appearances against Huddersfield and Arsenal) gave the team exactly what had been lacking. And in turn, players like Ritchie and Perez, who are talented complementary players but not good enough to be a team's creative or goalscoring drivers, improved for having less demanded of them, and for receiving slightly less attention from opponents.

When Ashley wants to play his bewildered man-in-the-street act for the public, he'll say he knows nothing about football. (When Alan Pardew publicly agreed with that notion, he received an official warning that if he said it again he'd be sacked. So much for Ashley's bravado about not caring what anyone says about him). But it's worse than that- he doesn't want to know anything about football. And I have a feeling the reason for that is that football is ultimately about bringing people together, creating collective goals, a degree of reciprocity.

By contrast, Ashley's every act screams selfishness, and the more you read about his activities both inside football and out, you note the recurring theme of his relishing being able to lord it over people, an apparent delight in setting people against each other and, at times, forcing them to grovel before him. It bears repeating that Mike Ashley bought Newcastle United around the time that two momentous things happened in his life- he made a billion quid, and his marriage fell apart. A writer wishing to show there's more important things than money and power might baulk at that juxtaposition for being too crude to set up. But then again, the man who leaves school with few qualifications then makes a fortune is a cliche in itself.

Ultimately, there's a sense that Ashley lives in mortal horror of the idea that other people might gain more from his running of NUFC than he will. He was furious that the club spent £9 million on Cisse in 2012 in pursuit of a Champions League finish only to miss out. Yet that summer the papers were full of stories that Cisse was now valued at more than double that money- and Ashley was supposed to want to buy low and sell high. Moreover, Demba Ba's agent had told the world and his dog his client had a £7 million release clause, meaning Ba's departure was only a matter of time. So the concern over his departure causing the team to struggle should have been allayed by Cisse's successful start.

The anger becomes all the stranger given Ashley is renowned as a gambling man. Signing Cisse was far less reckless than appointing Wise and Kinnear, or falling out with Keegan. So why couldn't he be philosophical? After all, the squad wasn't strong enough for the Champions League, so a top three finish would itself have required a big spend just to avoid a dangerous slump in 2012/13.

Maybe it was ego- maybe he felt Champions League qualification would have given him cause to gloat, or the window for a quick sale. Maybe he noted the joy of the fans at their club's unexpectedly terrific season, and watched Pardew collect the LMA award for the year and felt deprived.

However you look at it, Newcastle United's owner seemed a confused, damaged man, intent on spreading his confusion and damage wherever he may. It creates an awful lot of hassle for a coach with the Champions League, two UEFA Cups, two Ligas and a Coppa Italia to put up with, and it puts the question why he'd bother sticking around. Especially when Rafa knows West Ham would pretty much sacrifice Trevor Brooking in the centre circle to bring him on board.

 

[Hadoop]

Um yeah. Not gonna read that novel on my phone.

 

[Hadoop]

So Liverpool could still miss out on the Champions League next year lol.

 

[Stray Wasp]

Um yeah. Not gonna read that novel on my phone.

You mean you read novels under any circumstances?

How very old-fashioned of you.

 

[GB]

I worded my question poorly. I was asking if it's fair to say Benitez was going largely uncriticised rather than if it was fair for him to avoid criticism. As you say Ashley has plenty of sway over the parts of the press, so I'd rather expected the criticism to be coing through loud and clear after the Watford game.

It's strange how unfortunate coincidences follow Ashley around. Similar to his attempts to pay his workers a legal amount but somehow circumstances conspire and it keeps being delayed. The poor man.

 

[hatterson]

My phone is literally the only place I read novels. iBooks ftw

 

[GB]

What size screen do you have?

 

[hatterson]

What size screen do you have?

I’m on the X now, previously I’ve had basically skipped every second generation back to the 3g.

Test size adjustments make it easy to read for me and I’ve never found the display harsh on my eyes.

 

[Stray Wasp]

I worded my question poorly. I was asking if it's fair to say Benitez was going largely uncriticised rather than if it was fair for him to avoid criticism. As you say Ashley has plenty of sway over the parts of the press, so I'd rather expected the criticism to be coing through loud and clear after the Watford game.

It's strange how unfortunate coincidences follow Ashley around. Similar to his attempts to pay his workers a legal amount but somehow circumstances conspire and it keeps being delayed. The poor man.

On the contrary- I understood your question. I just used it to branch it into other matters that I think hang over the club like a noose. To summarise, criticism per se is water off a duck's back to Benitez. The issue is whether the potential reward available with NUFC makes the risk of having to steer through sporadic, off the field storms worthwhile. I think if he begins to lost trust in his players, to believe that they don't share his hunger for winning, the risk of working with Ashley may reach an intolerable level.

Ashley, it seems to me, has two aims.

1) try and mislead Benitez into signing a long-term, Pardewesque serf deal with prohibitive get-out clauses using vague promises of a big transfer budget that will vanish the second the ink dries on the contract.

2) in the likely event the above plan fails, use every piece of spin at his disposal to drive a wedge between Benitez and the fans.

As such, he will store a bad end to the season to be used at the optimum time.

Some of the players suggested the takeover story late last year unsettled them- a useful illustration that mental strength isn't their strong point. Benitez will also have it in mind that if he doesn't sign a new contract yet stays, Ashley will punish him by reducing the transfer budget from miniscule to stranglingly tight. And the message that Rafa is the root cause of the problem for failing to commit will be fed to the media. Again, the majority of the fans won't swallow that. But they don't need to- the trouble is the amount of utterly avoidable hassle this scenario would generate to distract from what should be the priority: winning games of football.

 

[Corto]

Ashley can click his fingers and have his London media serfs spew out whatever heap of drivel suits him. (A digression: Graeme Souness was very critical of Newcastle earlier in the season, saying exactly what Ashley would like to be able to get away with saying- that if Benitez was a good enough coach he'd be able to win games with a bunch of traffic cones. By a coincidence so pure it makes me weep for the way it gives Souness the air of being a reptile whose integrity can be bought and sold, shortly afterward it comes to light that he's doing a talk-in arranged by Ashley's personal-PR man. Said PR-man is currently being paid £500,000 by NUFC even though they already have their own PR team. And by another tragically pure coincidence, Mike Ashley owns shares in the PR man's company.)

I know its not on-topic, but...
I don't watch a lot of Graeme Souness, but when I do... The man just talks absolute nonsense.

 

[Stray Wasp]

I know its not on-topic, but...
I don't watch a lot of Graeme Souness, but when I do... The man just talks absolute nonsense.

A mighty player once, now he is an utter embarrassment.

The root cause is childishness and vanity- Souness has no grasp of tactics, so dog-in-the-manger style at every opportunity he disparages the idea that coaching can make a difference, as well as spouting a load of archaic alpha male garbage about passion and guts. Because as we all know, modern players are preening ninnies, unlike the hard men of Souness' era.

The number of times he's spouted that anyone can organise a defence, and all of Tyneside immediately thinks, 'Shall we ask Titus Bramble and Jean-Alain Boumsong whether they agree with you?' And his remarks about Arsene Wenger last week were disgraceful for the man whose major managerial legacy was to bring Liverpool's dominance of the English top flight to a crushing halt.

 

[les Habs]

@Stray Wasp You'll have to pardon my ignorance, but has there been a real push of late calling for Ashley to sell the club? I know there's been in the past, but I've not hear anything of late. Perhaps a Benitez flight to greener pastures would create greater demand. That said Ashley doesn't seem the sort to care a jot what the supporters think when it really comes down to it.